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Seun Kuti & Egypt 80: Heavier Yet Lays The Crownless Head
by Chris May
Seun Kuti is a chip off the old block: inheriting his father Fela Kuti's band Egypt 80, pushing at the edges of but staying more or less within Afrobeat's classic instrumental paradigm, unconditionally championing all oppressed and marginalized people, and, not least, enjoying blunts the size of baseball bats. One place where Seun ...
Kosher Jammers: Jewish Connections In Jazz
by Chris May
Kosher Jammers: Jewish Connections In Jazz Volume 1: The USA Mike Gerber 406 pages ISBN: 979-8-224-74480-0 Vinyl Vanguard 2024 Jews have been so intimately, influentially and copiously involved in the story of jazz that every person's list of ten favourite musicians is almost certain to include one Jewish player, ...
Ten Supreme Fender Rhodes Albums
by Chris May
In 1965, reeling from the impact of Motown and the Brit invasion led by the Beatles, and about to be hit by the triple whammy that was acid rock and the rebel culture that went with it, jazz was on the back foot. Its relevance as entertainment, art form and spiritual sustenance was under threat, at ...
Tony Oxley: Unreleased 1974 - 2016
by Chris May
The British drummer and bandleader Tony Oxley passed in 2023, aged 85, after a career which began in the mid 1960s as the drummer in the house band at Ronnie Scott's club. From this prestigious but relatively codified platform, Oxley soon steered into less travelled waters. In 1969 he was in the quartet which recorded John ...
Kolida Babo: Spirits Of Mauronoros
by Chris May
Here is some strange and magical music. A synthesis of global electro-acoustic modal jazz and the hermetic folk music of Epirus, a remote mountain region in northwestern Greece. It is played on traditional Balkan instruments--duduk and kaval double-reed woodwinds, qanun zither and gaida bagpipes--together with soprano and baritone saxophones and Moog, Roland and Farfisa synths and ...
Dorothy Ashby: Afro-Harping Deluxe Edition
by Chris May
There are certain instruments that struggled for attention in the years when the jazz ecology was an overwhelmingly male preserve--or rather, when many men perceived jazz to be a male preserve, and a heterosexual, alpha male one at that. Exhibit A, the flute, was described by one leading male alto saxophonist, a near contemporary of Charlie ...
Wayne Shorter: The Final Mission
by Chris May
Every good story has a beginning, a middle and an end. Depending on how one figures it, Wayne Shorter's recording history has upwards of half a dozen important chapters. They tell a tale of superheroes, of monsters and demons and, ultimately, of the sight of a new dawn. Just three of the chapters cover the story's ...
Mike Casey: Valencia
by Chris May
Saxophonist Mike Casey won a few hearts and minds among AAJ readers in 2017 with his Take Five profile, which we published round about the time of the self-release of his debut album, The Sound Of Surprise: Live At The Side Door. Refreshingly happy to express an opinion, Casey slammed jazz festivals for their short-term “band ...
Tony Oxley Quintet: Angular Apron
by Chris May
Among the most welcome jazz events of 2024 is the return to active duty of the great British saxophonist Larry Stabbins following an absence of over a decade. Stabbins went into voluntary exile in 2013, after around thirty-five years at the deep end of British jazz. Disenchanted with the culturally regressive direction in which the music ...
Daniel Herskedal: Call For Winter II: Resonance
by Chris May
Among the strangest all-horns discs ever heard in this parish is How It All Started (Hat Hut, 2007) by the Swiss quartet Mytha. Led by free improv and third stream trumpeter Hans Kennel, the group plays music made almost entirely on alphorns, heavy wooden horns ten to twelve feet long with curved bells that rest on ...
